I got started on a life of sci-fi geekery with Doctor Who. However, since I was only 5 in 1989 when the show was cancelled, I grew up without it on television. My introduction was literary: my primary school library had a good selection of the Target novelisations.

Now that I’m in the position of actually having got my hands dirty writing sci-fi of my own, I’m able to feel less compunction about confessing a great dream of mine: I would love to write an episode of Doctor Who. And if I did, this is how it would begin…

INT. THE KELVINGROVE MUSEUM – NIGHT

We follow a man, a janitor who looks like the Doctor as he appeared as a school caretaker, as he wheels a bucket and mop through the main hall of the Kelvingrove Museum. The hall is dark but lit by bright shafts of moonlight.

The janitor – we do not see his face – stops and starts to wash the floor, whistling the hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah.

As he whistles and mops the floor, the masks suspended in a great display all silently, and in unison, turn to look at him. He works across the floor and the masks follow his every move, their grins and grimaces frozen but their blank eyes watching…

THE MASKS
Will you guide us? Will you be our guide? Lead us.

The janitor reels back, clutching his heart, terror on his face. We see it is not the Doctor. He sprawls on his back, falling over the mop bucket, dying of a heart attack in a pool of dirty water.

THE MASKS
Not the leader. Not the gathering storm.

One mask turns to the others and addresses them –

ORION
He had but one heart. He was not the guide. [pause] Where is the Doctor?

OPENING TITLES IN.

Imagine all of these, late one night when you’re alone, wordlessly turning in unison to look at you…

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About Gavin

I am a 32-year-old PhD student in Aberdeen, Scotland. I work in QC at an e-learning company. I'm originally Northern Irish, though I've lived here in Aberdeen for several years. I am, essentially, somebody who is very normal, yet to whom very strange things keep happening...